"OMG, our beloved Emperor is gone! (sorta') But don't worry: the Democrats are fanning the flames of crazy, so it's just a matter of time before they run things again."

Monday, May 29

"Global warming"-- now callled "climate change"--revisited

In case you haven't noticed, the Democrat party is still at full-scream on an idea called "climate change."

That theory was originally called "global warming," but after several record-breaking cold winters began to make a majority of Americans think the notion of global warming was horse-shit, the warmies didn't miss a beat: they simply changed the name of the alleged crisis from "global warming" to "climate change."

Then someone--actually a few thousand someones who knew how to do a thing called "google search"--noted that the Earth's climate was constantly changing--had always changed--so to get upset about this was--well, sort of insane.

This took the warmies aback: The sheeple weren't supposed to know that the climate of the planet changed naturally. The goal was to make the sheeple believe "climate" was constant, so if it suddenly began changing, that was very, very dangerous!

But the warmies had more ammunition: proof that this particular change wasn't natural, but was caused by human activity!

Specifically, the warmies noted--correctly--that human activities like driving cars and heating homes and hot water, and making stuff--and breathing--all emitted CO2. Then they pointed to data showing that between 1964 and 2000, CO2 levels in the atmosphere had risen from 350 parts per million to 400--an astonishing 14 percent increase.

They also noted--again correctly--that the use of carbon-based fuel by humans rose exponentially after 1945 or so. So there ya go: use of carbon fuels increases, then atmospheric CO2 increases! Even a child could see the connection! Now if they just had a scary effect that could plausibly be blamed on CO2, the stage would be set for destroying western economies. (You'll see why later.)

What was needed was for some PhDs to claim that the CO2 was causing something to happen that was just awful, terrible, fatal. It didn't take long.

If you're new to the "climate change" circus it's time to introduce you to Michael Mann's infamous "hockey stick" graph--which arguably sparked the hysteria of alleged "global warming."

Sorry..."climate change."

Mann is a PhD at U. Penn. In 1999 he and a couple of colleagues published a paper that included the graph below, which he claimed represented global average temperatures for the last 1000 years.

Mann's "hockey stick" graph (adapted from IPCC's "Third assessment"

Note the steep increase in (alleged) steep rise in global temperatures since 1900. If true--and who would doubt an honest scientist?--it looks like the end of the world is near. Which was exactly the kind of reaction one would expect.

Here was the final link in the chain of absolute proof that CO2--caused by humans burning carbon-based fuels--was causing a disaster. To review:
1) Burning carbon fuels--oil, gasoline, natural gas, jet fuel and coal--produces CO2;
2) Beginning around 1945, use of carbon-based fuels has grown steeply;
3) Atmospheric CO2 increased by about 14% between 1960 and 2000;
4) CO2 warms the planet by trapping heat that would otherwise escape (a greenhouse gas);
5) Since 1900, the average temperature of the entire Earth had risen incredibly steeply;

Voila: What more proof could one possibly need?

Which leads us to the final claim, and the warmies "conclusion:"
6) Surface temperature is higher than ever before, which will lead
to "feedback" and "runaway increases" due to positive feedback
(instability); and we'll all die. Or something.

But once again, in the era of the internet, people who would normally never run into something like Mann's paper do in fact see it. And a few of those folks--with lots of expertise in statistics, among other things, think "Wow, that claim seems to be SO unusual that I wonder if the guys who published it were...honest." And they download a copy of the paper and data (rarely posted) and start analyzing.

That's exactly what happened, and the result was a decade of dueling papers. Except the people who thought Mann was--at least in large part--faking it had a really hard time getting published. Later we would find out that the reason for that was that Mann and his co-conspirators were friends with the editors of practically every scientific journal--and leaned on those editors to get them to refuse papers that disagreed with Mann et al.

Of course you think that simply must be a wacko conspiracy theory. Couldn't possibly be true. Among other reasons, one couldn't possibly keep that sort of thing from eventually being known outside the group of conspirators, eh?

Aaaand turns out that last part was right: Eventually their lies were exposed.

The UK's main site for climate study was at the University of East Anglia. In November 2009 someone hacked into that group's email server and copied over 1,000 emails--which were quickly posted on many climate-study websites.

The emails showed Mann and one of his friends--a key player in the research group named Phil Jones--discussing ways to "hide the decline"--a reference to the fact that actual *measured* temperatures on earth weren't rising, as Mann et al claimed, but had actually been falling over the last decade. They also discussed the need to "eliminate the MWP" (medieval warm period)--a period around 1200 A.D. when Greenland was warm enough to grow grapes.

The emails also showed Mann discussing how to get friendly journal editors to refuse to publish papers critical of Mann's work or GW in general.

And just as happene after the release of the DNC emails, neither Mann nor UEA disputed the authenticity or content of the emails, but simply explained to friendly reporters that the emails simply didn't mean what they clearly said.

Just like the Democrats after their emails were exposed, eh?

Now let's return to those four links that supposedly prove that global warming, caused by humans burning carbon fuels, is warming the planet by a significant and dangerous amount:

No one on the "AGW-skeptic" side disputes the first 4 links. The problems are with the last two.

The first thing we need to point out is a logical pitfall that used
to be taught to college freshmen: "correlation does not imply
causation." Even if temperatures were indeed rising (and as you'll see,
they're not), it doesn't mean any alleged rise was caused by rising CO2. Further,
while no one disputes that humans have been burning far more
carbon-based fuels since 1945--indisputably producing more CO2--that
doesn't show that the increase in atmospheric CO2 is due mainly to human
contributions.

Next, about that claimed big
increase in temperatures Mann (and others) claimed happened since 1900: First, a big part of Mann and colleagues' conclusions relied on the thickness of tree rings. They had cross-sections of a hundred or so, but picked only the ones that supported their theory.

Next, the people reporting "official" temperatures lied--and continue to
do so. The two U.S. government agencies responsible for gathering and publishing
temperature data--NOAA and NASA--have systematically changed
*measured,* reported temperatures, both past and present. In 99% of the
cases those changes reduce past measured temps and increase current
ones.

The agencies claim these changes are made not by capricious human order but by an absolutely fair, neutral computer algorithm. So naturally the folks running AGW discussion
sites asked to see the computer code allegedly used by the
agencies to make those changes.

You may be surprised to learn that the agencies have refused, claiming the code
is "proprietary" (i.e. "we own it"), even though development of the *alleged* code was clearly paid for with taxpayer money. So unless it's a national secret, it ain't proprietary.

I'll try to finish this later. Meanwhile, here's a good summary of a *few* of the problems with "global warming" by Bill Whittle:

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About Me

Ex-AF pilot. While airliners are very safe, flying a single-pilot jet can be extremely demanding, especially in bad weather. It's a *huge* tribute to engineers that today's commercial jetliners are so amazingly safe!